


Scourge of the Empire

by Kablob, mylordshesacactus



Series: Star Trek: Challenger [7]
Category: Star Trek
Genre: Air Vent Shenanigans, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-02-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22934656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kablob/pseuds/Kablob, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylordshesacactus/pseuds/mylordshesacactus
Summary: 1.07 | Isolated in an uncharted asteroid field, unexplained warp trails and scrambled transmissions begin to dog Challenger's footsteps...
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Series: Star Trek: Challenger [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1439929
Comments: 25
Kudos: 31





	1. Chapter 1

[X](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpdxvL61zr8&list=LLtCjrYmG1qqxEIjzhIwysBA&index=20&t=0s)

The howling of the red-alert sirens was silent now. But lights still flashed, harsh and scarlet, flooding the empty passageways of the Earth starship _Challenger._

The burns of disruptor fire, the warped metal of a phase-pistol blast, were scattered across the bulkheads; but the marks were few and far between. Signs of a struggle; but a weak one, brief and disorganized.

Heavy boots stomped down the passage. The Klingon patrol was small; heavily-armed and on full, professional alert, but their weapons were at rest as they stalked through the corridors, eyes flicking across the diagonals for a threat they clearly did not believe would emerge.

Most of the damage to the ship had been done in passing. Here and there a door control threw sparks, or a relay junction flickered weakly. The Klingons’ armored boots threw up clouds of ash as they walked through a heavily scorched patch of bare floor; a plasma interlink, cut in the fighting. The flow had been shut down and the fire long since smothered, but the remains still filled the passage with an acrid chemical burn.

As the patrol vanished around a turn, the only sound left behind was the low hiss of a pneumatic door. Punctured or sliced in a struggle, the escaping hot air threw a faint mist into the passageway. The cabin door it controlled periodically jerked, trying to close but lacking the air pressure to do so.

Unseen by the patrol, behind the melted grate of an air vent, a single green eye burned.

* * *

**Captain’s Log, September 30, 2154**

At the risk of tempting fate, our jury-rigged life support alterations appear to be holding.

Engine power is compromised, and we will have little in the way of weapons or hull polarization if push comes to shove. In the meantime, however, we have oxygen, we have climate control, and we have one another.

The survivors, as well, are...stable. The heroic efforts and sacrifice of my crew and their fellow prisoners meant we were able to keep most families together—for better or worse. From speaking to them, I suspect many are still unable to believe that their salvation is real. It will take time, consistency, and gentleness for any of them to truly believe that they’re safe now. Frankly, it may not be in their best interests to believe it yet. _Challenger_ has mental health staff and support systems; but we are not complex trauma specialists, nor do we have suitable facilities to work with children.

For now, and after consulting with the medical staff, the policy is to continue being patient and kind, and to focus on getting these victims to the security of a well-protected, land-based facility that can provide long-term care.

I suspect that real private rooms, and the opportunity to change into clean civilian clothes, will also work wonders.

* * *

**Captain’s Log, October 4, 2154**

Our return to more secure space continues to be uneventful. I have been forced to admit to Commander Yurovsky, under duress, that there is, very occasionally, something to be said in favor of a lack of adventure.

We were able to negotiate a trade with a passing Tellarite freighter for extra food supplies, as well as a few other necessities we’re beginning to run short on with so many unexpected passengers. They insulted our ship design, our respective lineages, our intelligence, and Lieutenant Aleksi’s hair. They then proceeded to lend us their shuttlecraft in order to transport everything we’d requested in exchange for what amounts to little more than an IOU at slightly below market price, as well as a small package of assorted candies free of charge, “for the children.”

Let the official record clearly state that I did not notice even a _hint_ of the Commander’s smile, and any accusation of such toward her amounts to nothing short of malicious slander.

It hasn’t been entirely smooth sailing. We experienced a concerning processing glitch in the climate-control subroutines at around 0400 this morning. Several hours of steadily rising temperatures placed us in a state of emergency—but the blown circuit was isolated and replaced, and the temperature range has been within normal limits for the past ninety minutes. 

I am standing down yellow alert. I also commend both Delta Shift Engineering and Lieutenant Sar for their quick, efficient work in discovering and solving the problem.

* * *

**Captain’s Log, October 9, 2154**

_Challenger_ has done her duty.

Emotions are high and mixed tonight. The ship herself must have breathed a sigh of relief as our refugees were offloaded; it will be the work of several days, if not weeks, to determine the extent of the repairs needed as a result of our rushed, slapdash attempts to supercharge life support. 

Her crew, of course, is glad to see our new friends delivered safely. Challenger made rendezvous at 18:04 hours with the hospital ship _Halifax_ and her escorts, the Warp 3 armed merchant cruiser _Chester_ and the Vulcan science vessel _Azore._ They, along with the Andorian warships _Snowdrop, Ascania,_ and _Dwinsk_ will ensure the hospital ship reaches a safe port unmolested.

At the same time, while this is best for everyone, there is a sense of loss. Having taken responsibility for their well-being, it aches to surrender that charge to another vessel—even another vessel profoundly better suited to give traumatized refugees the mental and physical care that they deserve.

I myself am not immune. It feels as if we’ve failed them, simply letting them walk away like this without being able to follow. Knowing we’ve done very little to alleviate their pain. We were able, at least, to provide them with some blank Starfleet uniforms. No patches, departmental piping, or insignia, so Command has no reason to protest; even blue jumpsuits are better than rags.

Ah, perhaps I should be more clear. No patches except for _Challenger_ ’s service patch. That much, I’m willing to defend to the Admiralty. They deserve that mark of protection. And perhaps...if I’m speaking honestly, the crew, and their captain, needed to know that a part of us goes with them. If it was a selfish gesture at its root, so be it. With very few exceptions, we’re only human.

* * *

**Captain’s Log, October 12, 2154**

At the risk of sounding cliche...well, the old cliche is right. Work is good for grief.

 _Challenger_ is now free to do the work we set out after. Her engines, weapons, and defenses are back to fully operational; however, we’ve kept many of the improvements to life support efficiency and will be transmitting them back to Earth with the next data packet.

Long-range scans indicated the strong possibility that the asteroid belt in this uninhabited solar system could contain dilithium crystals. _Challenger_ has arrived in orbit, and detailed scans have been in progress for six Earth-standard hours.

**Captain’s Log, Supplemental**

Sensor control reports “odd” energy readings from deeper in the asteroid belt. We have yet to confirm the presence of dilithium, though continued scans are promising. In the morning we intend to, with caution, proceed toward the abnormal readings and determine their source.

* * *

**Captain’s Log, October 14, 2154**

Sensor Control and Commander Yurovsky are beginning to grow concerned. 

Initial scans and continued sensor watch have shown no other vessels or life-forms in this asteroid field. We are in unclaimed space, near no known settlements or stations, and while hailing frequencies are open, no contact has been made or attempted by anyone. By every indication, _Challenger_ is alone in the black.

Isolation would match the Command predictions for this mission. While the indications of possible dilithium ore are promising, there are millions of such possible mines in charted neutral space; there’s no reason to expect any other life in this exact spot, at this exact time.

As such, I and my crew would very much like to know whose warp trails and impulse engine residue we keep crossing.

* * *

 **Captain’s Log, October 16, 2154  
** **01:30**

We may very well owe our lives to Ensign Sandoval’s intuition.

We’ve been aware for several days that _Challenger_ is not alone in this asteroid field. Warp and impulse signature analysis has been inconclusive; the residue and energy patterns could indicate any of several factions within reasonable travel distance. And our silent neighbors have kept their communications far more tightly guarded than our own.

Tightly guarded or not, however, radio discipline is no match for a determined and methodical communications officer. Coordinating with Lieutenant Lehtonen to establish where, if he were a secretive vessel performing reconnaissance in an asteroid field, he would most likely hide, and operating under the assumption that _Challenger_ herself would be a primary target for monitoring, he managed to manipulate directional passive sensors to intercept a brief burst of comm chatter.

Lieutenant Sar’s codebreaking algorithms were able to break the comm encryption, and Ensign Sandoval has just confirmed the language as Klingon.

Given our vulnerable position and isolation, and the limited amount of dilithium Starfleet could acquire from this asteroid field even if we were able to confirm its existence, I have given the order to, in the most formal parlance, get the hell out of Dodge. There has been no hostile movement in the past six hours, and we have left the densest of the asteroid field behind. I’m choosing to stand down yellow alert and allow transfer of command to the Beta Shift crew so that Alpha Shift can sleep. 

I myself intended to remain in the situation room just in case. Commander Yurovsky, however, wishes to register her disagreement with this choice given I have determined the situation to be safe enough to drop yellow alert status, meaning it is safe enough to allow my perfectly competent Beta Shift staff to do their jobs in my absence. I have acknowledged her protest and am forced to conclude that she is correct. Hovering like a mother hen will not be helpful. I am transferring command of the bridge and retiring for the night.

Matos out.

* * *

**Unsent Communication: Watch Officer, October 16, 2154, 05:12**

_There was no warning! Somehow they counteracted our sensors, warn Command, Security’s trying to respond but they can’t hold it, there was no time to—_

* * *

**Captain’s Quarters, Verbal Emergency Override Jacui-Five-Seven**

[Purge Core Navigation Data]  
[Purge Core Navigation Data: Complete]

[Transmit Distress Signal]  
[Transmitting Distress Signal: Complete]   
**!! Error !!** **  
**[Error Identification: Signal Jamming Detected, Transmission Not Received]

[Generate Random 12-Digit Alphanumeric Code]

[Helm Control: Access Locked]  
[System Schematics: Access Locked]   
[Translation Matrix: Disabled]

[Maintenance Tunnels: Initiate Access Lock]

 **!! Warning !!  
** _This action requires manual reset of individual access hatch to reverse. Activate explosive bolts on Maintenance Tunnel Access Hatches: All Decks?_

[Maintenance Tunnel Access Lock: Confirm]

[Initiate Countdown: 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1]

[Maintenance Tunnels: Sealed]

* * *

Sofia reached above her head. Slowly, carefully, she gripped the edge of an air vent and hauled herself up and over the edge, breathing quietly, careful with every motion not to rattle the phase rifle slung over her shoulder against the metal walls.

Noise was the enemy, now. Echoes carried through these vents, and anything that alerted the boarders to their location meant death.

Pressure on her back allowed her to relax; Yurovsky kept a hand over the rifle as Sofia pulled her feet up and sat back against the wall, muffling it until her captain had settled.

The access tunnels were well-lit, clean, and ventilated; but they were cramped and close and filled with electrical equipment, and it was tiring, hot work crawling through them in an attempt to stay one step ahead of the Klingons. Wordlessly, cautious of her grip and the risk of knocking an elbow against the side of the vent, Yurovsky pulled out a sports bottle and handed it over.

It was a habit many of the Science and, now, Security teams had picked up from Esther. 

Sofia’s heart clenched as she accepted the bottle and took a long drink.

By some miraculous quirk of fate, most of the crew was still alive. They’d managed to confirm this in the first few hours after the boarding. Most but not all of the bridge officers had been separated out and thrown in the brig; they had just scouted that area, and were trying to retreat to a safer location to regroup. The rest of the crew was crowded into the cargo area.

It was unclear, at the moment, whether anyone else had gotten the idea or managed the timing of diving into the access tunnels before Sofia sealed them in like a tomb.

Sofia ran a thumb over Keyahi’s blade at her hip. It seemed… out of character for Klingons to keep prisoners alive; consistently, they’d demonstrated that they considered it not merely beneath them, but an _insult_ to their enemies not to slaughter them if given the chance. Keyahi had spoken of taking prisoners with the same kind of disgust Sofia might have shown at the thought of desecrating enemy corpses. Beneath the dignity of a Klingon warrior to spare the lives of enemy combatants, not out of disdain but because it was distasteful, dishonorable, to be cruel.

If Sofia were a consummate optimist, she might interpret this as a sign that perhaps the Klingons had learned to believe in Starfleet’s non-military foundation and weren’t certain the crew counted as combatants. Maybe this captain had a different concept of honor, or was respecting the fact that human beliefs toward captivity were different than his own.

More likely, he intended to torture them before they were executed and hadn’t gotten around to it yet.

Finally, with a distant rumble, the reprieve they had been waiting for kicked in. The air shaft began to vibrate, and Sofia carefully shifted to place her head nearer her first officer’s.

Yurovsky grimaced.

“I’m sorry,” she said, low and quiet, using the hum of the air processors to cover her voice. “I should have trusted your judgement.”

Sofia shook her head. “You did your duty.”

“No.” Yurovsky was too intelligent to raise her voice, but the set of her jaw was firm. “You were correct in thinking something about the situation wasn’t right. I was wrong. Let me acknowledge it.”

Sofia gripped her wrist. “If wanting to stay on the bridge had been a judgement call, I would. But the only reasoning I had was anxiety over the unknown. _Fear,_ Commander. No, you will not blame yourself for preventing me from making myself sick and interfering with the running of the ship because of my own nameless fear.”

Yurovsky’s shoulders relaxed slightly, but she still looked unhappy. “Yes, sir.”

With difficulty, Sofia managed a smile. “If it helps, you almost certainly saved my life.” The smile weakened after a moment, then faded. There were no ventilation shafts or access tunnels big enough for anyone to even consider crawling through that connected to the bridge, of course. But they were observant, and Klingons were not subtle.

By some miracle, the beta-shift bridge crew had been taken alive. Not unharmed in all cases, not conscious in several, but they didn’t appear to be dead. That really _was_ unusual for Klingons.

“My being there would not have made our sensors work differently,” she pointed out, firm but quiet. “It would not have changed how many of the crew were asleep and unable to respond in time. All it would have done is place the enemy commanding officer in the line of fire, and I think we’re in agreement that avoiding such a thing is preferable.”

Yurovsky couldn’t possibly argue with that; but the stubborn look in her eyes said she was going to try anyway.

As she opened her mouth, the rumble of air processors faded, and the ventilation shaft shuddered into traitorous silence again.

Yurovsky closed her eyes, and gave a nearly-inaudible sigh.

Without a word, she gestured down the echoey tunnel. Sofia took a deep breath, nodded once, and rolled carefully onto her hands and knees.

An odd sound, halfway between a squeaky hinge and a wail, barely audible, bounced off the walls of the maintenance shaft behind them. Sofia’s head snapped around; but nothing appeared, and Yurovsky didn’t seem to have heard it. After a long moment, she turned back around and began slowly, carefully pulling herself up the vent.

Several minutes after she was gone, the noise repeated itself, louder. On its heels, quietly, something fell to the floor with a muted _thud_.


	2. Chapter 2

There was a method to Atsa’s madness.

He stood in the far back quadrant of his cell, facing into the corner, eyes closed, feet shoulder-width apart, hands linked loosely behind his head. No part of him, crucially, was making contact with the walls.

The Klingons hadn’t bothered trying to stop him from doing this, aside from one mocking comment about his cowardice for holding a submissive position even after he was released from disruptor point and another, later inquiry, when the guard changed, as to whether he had been hit very hard on the head.

If pressed, Atsa would tell them he was meditating, but for now he was trying to avoid letting them realize the extent of his Klingon.

Hence, the positioning.

There was a slight— _ very _ slight, but present—audible buzz, from the energy field that blocked off their brig cells. There was more interference in the general vibration of a starship around them. On most of  _ Challenger, _ the engine vibrations were all but impossible to pick up on; she was a very well-designed ship. Down in the brig, however, less attention had been paid to keeping things perfectly quiet. It wasn’t nearly loud enough to interfere with sleep or comfort, of course, they weren’t barbarians.

But Atsa needed the closest thing to perfect silence that he could get, because the guard post was just on the other side of a closed door, and none of their captors had realized yet that Hoshi Sato wasn’t the  _ only  _ Earth officer who didn’t need the translation matrix to understand Klingon.

He could  _ almost  _ hear them. But only if he was as far away from the hum of the force field as possible, and didn’t have any of the ship’s subtle humming reverberating through his body, and if he used the length of his folded arms and the angle of the cell walls to focus the sound into his ears.

A very, very faint tap on his left shoulder. Aleksi was a blessing; he hadn’t wasted any time questioning Atsa’s explanation of what he needed, and he’d been completely silent until now.

Eyes still closed, Atsa held up two fingers—they hadn’t actually worked out that signal in as many words, but two weeks ago he’d made the D&D group actually work out a series of hand signals before he’d allowed their use in roleplaying a poorly-conceived infiltration, and he was hoping Aleksi would remember them as well.

Two fingers meant  _ go ahead, but quietly. _ Opening his entire hand would have meant  _ wait. _

Voice pitched below a whisper, Aleksi breathed, “Do you know why they kept us together?”

Atsa inclined his head slightly.

“The others?”

Another twitch up and down, not enough to shift the hair against his ears and create any auditory interference. The guards appeared to be playing some kind of card game, so most of what he was picking up right now was useless; but people gossipped over cards. At any moment, they might drop a crucial detail.

It had to be miserable, being Aleksi right now. He’d been so incredibly patient, and Atsa owed him a lot more than simply being kept in the loop. Besides; two heads were better than one.

“The captain’s missing,” he said, on a breath out, barely loud enough to hear it himself. “Commander Yurovsky too. We’re here. All the engineering officers are in cargo bay two under heavy guard.”

“Esther?”

“I don’t know.”

“Slavers  _ again?” _

Atsa risked turning to smile at him. Aleksi was  _ never  _ this succinct, especially not when he was obviously terrified. That he was making so much of an effort to respect Atsa’s need for quiet was—he was hurting, and Atsa ached with the need to comfort him  _ almost  _ as intensely as he felt the crushing duty to stay where he was and listen.

Atsa shook his head carefully. He’d had the thought too, when he realized they weren’t killing prisoners. That went against everything they knew about Klingon protocol and honor. And while keeping Atsa alive made sense—that wasn’t ego, it was just a  _ fact, _ he was their translator—not everyone on the crew was worth interrogating later. Thankfully, he’d overheard enough mocking comments to understand the situation better. 

“No, it’s not that,” he murmured. “It’s an insult. We turned and ran when we identified them, and then they  _ still _ caught us by surprise. So they don’t believe we deserve warrior’s deaths. The captain sounds like...a piece of work. They’re gloating about humiliating us, so they’ll wait a while before they start killing anyone off.”

Aleksi nodded and sat down against the wall again.

Another long pause, in which Atsa learned nothing of interest except that he was starting to understand Klingon card suits. Another careful tap on the shoulder, another flicker of fingers to go ahead.

“Why  _ are _ we together? The others aren’t here.”

That was true. For some reason, only middle-rank officers had been brought to the brig. The beta-shift bridge crew were here, split up between cells. Lieutenant Srisati from Sickbay had been dragged in, bleeding heavily from a cut above his eye, though thankfully he didn’t seem to be suffering any symptoms of concussion or severe blood loss; Aleksi had been keeping an eye on him for several hours. But all the others had been separated one per cell. And the Klingons hadn’t run out of cells, either; several stood empty.

Whispers from the other prisoners (when they could get away with talking) and overheard snippets from the guards had Atsa feeling cautiously optimistic. It really did look like Captain Matos might have gotten into the access tunnels before they sealed, and nobody had seen Commander Yurovsky either. He wished he knew for certain what had happened to Esther and Tisarr; but at least Nurse Srisati could confirm that Doctor Atakan was alive and well, though she and most of her staff had been pressed into service healing the injured Klingons. It was the price of not only their lives but of being permitted to tend to injured  _ Challenger _ crew afterward, if any of their own wounded still survived.

Tisarr he had to assume had been isolated with the other non-humans; surely if she hadn’t been, the guard would have just said “Andorians” and left it at that. And Esther, if she wasn’t here, had either vanished into the maintenance tunnels too or....

_ All  _ of which was a lot less distracting and embarrassing than having to explain to Aleksi why they, specifically, hadn’t been separated.

“I’m…” He cleared his throat. “Your mate, apparently. I think Klingons consider it normal for...those...to be deployed together on warships.”

And  _ he _ was, specifically,  _ Aleksi’s _ mate, according to the Klingons. They might not be able to read the crew rosters, but they could figure out rank insignias well enough. He wasn’t sure what about the situation was most insulting, frankly.

“Oh.” Risking a glance over his shoulder, Atsa was reassured that at least Aleksi was blushing just as intensely as he was. “Right. We should probably… talk about that? I like you a lot, and—”

He cut himself off as Atsa’s left hand suddenly snapped open. He listened intently; and with every passing second, his shoulders tensed.

* * *

With great difficulty, Natalia and her captain had found a safe base of operations.

She corrected the sentiment. They had found a base of operations.

At the moment, that was the best they could hope for. They’d managed to set up in a deep, well-insulated section of the maintenance tunnels, with hatches to seal off their intersection. It wouldn’t be  _ impossible, _ if the Klingons gained entrance to the tunnels, to surround them here; but with five different exits—four in every direction and one at a diagonal above their heads—all leading to wildly disparate sections of the ship, it would be impossible to do it without their hearing the attempt long in advance. 

In the meantime, with the hatches closed around them, they could speak freely with little to no risk of the sound carrying. And Natalia had even been able to convince Matos to sleep, if only for three hours. They were going to need her.

Now, however, Matos slung the phase rifle off her shoulder and set it aside, cracking her spine. 

“I don’t suppose,” she said, “that there’s any point in asking you for an analysis of the tactical situation. I can guess.”

“Yes, sir. I appreciate your restraint in not asking.” Natalia checked the charge and safety on her phase pistol, and then her backup phase pistol, and then the smaller, holdout phase pistol in her boot. “I’m not comfortable using profanity while in uniform.”

_ “Now _ she has a sense of humor,” Matos muttered under her breath. But it had gotten a real, eye-twinking smile, so Natalia felt it had been a break in professionalism well-spent. “I suppose it’s a stroke of luck that we supercharged our life support last month. I wouldn’t want to think about the effect of all these Klingons if we hadn’t.”

In Natalia’s professional opinion, life support was likely to be strained regardless and they needed their Engineering team back in operation as soon as possible. She chose not to point that out, at least not yet. It was too obvious what would happen as soon as the Klingons realized the same problem; and they would not let the Engineering crew of a captured vessel back into the engine room. They would begin executions.

Matos was already suffering far more than she let on; danger to her crew was a torment to any captain worthy of the name. And there was no captain more worthy than Sofia Matos. If Natalia could shield her from any more devastating fear, she would do so. Until speaking would serve a purpose.

“Luck or something higher,” she said quietly, and left it at that.

Matos inclined her head, then closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Right. Obviously, we need to free the crew and retake the ship.”

“Yes, sir.” Natalia sat forward. “I’ve identified primary targets, if you would like my input.”

“No, Commander,” Matos told her drily. “I have no interest at all in the input of my tactical officer on how two individuals who have sealed themselves in the walls are going to retake a vessel single-handedly from twenty-seven Klingons.”

Natalia rolled her eyes. “Very good, Captain. Twenty-six.”

“Twenty-seven,” Matos corrected calmly. “Two of them are twins, they wear different colors in their hair. Continue. What’s our first target?”

Natalia stared at her for a second, then shook her head sharply. “There would be little point in breaking into the cargo bay to free the crew without having weapons to provide them,” she began.”

“Agreed.”

Natalia nodded. “Therefore—the armory, first and foremost. The Security team will have sealed it against boarders, but it will be guarded if nothing else. It might very well be worth our time to liberate Sickbay first as well; we  _ will _ need doctors on hand. But that could tip our hand, and doctors are more valuable to the Klingons alive than rank-and-file crewmen.”

Matos considered that seriously, and shook her head.

“We can’t risk it,” she decided. “Dr. Atakan and her team will have to hold out. They’re doctors; there are too many lives at stake, and they won’t thank us for prioritizing their own. But there is a breakout that has to be made first, with absolute efficiency; the longer we put it off, the greater the danger the entire crew is in.”

Natalia waited; but as Matos opened her mouth to speak, a low wail echoed, tinny and distant, through the tunnels. Seconds later, the hatch at Natalia’s back—the once facing an empty, sealed access tunnel, that none of the boarders could possibly have accessed without a controlled demolition charge or repeated, deafening concussive force—clicked and began to turn.

* * *

This was bad.

Atsa couldn’t afford to pace, but he bounced one foot with frantic energy. His mind raced, so loudly he couldn’t follow the Klingon conversation sometimes.

This was very not good.

“The Klingon captain’s angry,” he murmured. Aleksi tensed. “They haven’t been able to unlock helm control, we’re still on autopilot back toward friendly space. If they can’t get steering back they won’t be able to take the ship as a prize. He has his people in Engineering trying to shut down the warp core, but they can’t hack into our system schematics.”

Aleksi gave him an odd look and whispered, “They can’t figure out how to shut down the warp core? I could do  _ that.” _

“They don’t know how our power system works,” Atsa breathed back. “They can’t risk shutting down essential systems without knowing how to bring them back up.” 

“Good.” Atsa shook his head, and Aleksi’s shoulders hunched. “Why?”

“He’s…  _ very _ angry. I don’t understand most of it.” The Klingons in the next room were getting agitated, enough that he could just barely hear them over their whispers. “I think the captain’s doing good work. There’s been weird things happening that they don’t understand. One of their codebreakers was trying to get into the helm controls and set the computers to work while he went to make a report. He came back a few minutes later and they only just now realized that somehow a bunch of junk command prompts were entered while he was gone. Empty room, no way in or out for anything close to human-sized, but that’s five hours of analysis that’s no good anymore.”

Aleksi gave a sigh of relief. Atsa—agreed with him, obviously, of course this was a good thing. It was paramount, the security of the ship. And...part of him really did want to grin, imagining his captain being this...petty. 

“They’re talking about seeing things out of the corners of their eyes, apparently the first officer was hit in the eye with a pen when she was looking around Engineering but nobody saw where it came from. A crucial access point to the translation matrix shorted out from water damage but there are no water pipes anywhere near it. The captain’s suddenly incredibly sick when he’s onboard  _ Challenger _ , but fine the moment he transfers back to the bird of prey. I don’t know how she pulled  _ that _ off, but they’re pretty convinced the ship’s haunted.”

The Klingon officer on duty yelled at the guards for being superstitious cowards, and the conversation stopped. Atsa, flexing his fingers, sat on the floor next to Aleksi and gripped his arm. That had been entertaining, but it didn’t change the basic situation.

He was fluent in enough languages that there was no polite way to bring it up in conversation without being an ass. He still didn’t have the words to explain to this sweet, smart, earnest flyboy what was about to happen.

He steadied himself with some slow breaths. They were running out of time now. He owed it to Aleksi to try.


	3. Chapter 3

Natalia braced against the side of the tunnel intersection, phase pistol levelled at the opening hatch. Across the small space, Matos picked up her rifle and set it to stun. Neither breathed as the lock slowly turned, the doors released with a pneumatic hiss—

A wide-eyed, dirty blonde head poked its way through, shrieked, and retreated with a slam.

Matos blinked.

“...Ensign Larold?” she said carefully.

The hatch opened again, fully this time. Larold, and Lieutenant Sar behind him with a phase rifle levelled between Matos’ eyes, glanced between the two and visibly melted with relief. Sar hastily flicked off the power to her rifle and set it aside, hauling herself through the gap while Larold closed the hatch behind them.

“You’re  _ alive!” _ he exclaimed. Matos, Natalia, and Lieutenant Sar gestured him quiet. Lowering his voice, he said, “I’m sorry, sir. Captain. Ma’am. It’s just—I’m really glad you’re here. We thought it was just us, I…”

Matos reached out to clasp his shoulder, before offering Sar her water bottle. It was waved off; as one of Esther’s officers, she had been among the first to start wearing her own. 

“Well,” Matos observed. “That explains a great deal. I wondered who’d been behind all that sabotage of the Klingon’s hacking attempts.”

There was an awkward pause.

“Sabotage?” asked Larold.

Sar shook her head. “We haven’t even been able to do much intelligence-gathering, sir,” she said apologetically. “We’ve been trying to figure out how to spring Esther.”

Natalia sat forward. “You know where she is?”

Larold looked even paler than usual. “Yes ma’am.”

“She pulled off her rank ensignia and ducked in with the rest of the Science division,” Sar reported. The tension in her shoulders, her anxious white-knuckled grip on the strap of her sports bottle, belied her calm tone. “She’s in the cargo hold trying to blend in. We were able to get into the tunnels before they sealed, but just barely, she was behind us..”

“We have to rescue her,” Larold said, admirably restrained. “The Klingons are trying to break our encryption and ECM routines, and she  _ wrote _ them. If they realize where she is, they’ll find a way to force her to break them.”

Matos squeezed his shoulder, voice gentle. “Which is why we can’t risk exposing her, Ensign. For now, we have a plan to break the crew free; if Esther is with them, no one will be happier than I will to get her back.”

“Polite disagreement over here, ma’am,” Sar commented. Matos acknowledged it with a nod.

“Point taken, Lieutenant. As it happens, our priority target right now is Ensign Sandoval.” At Natalia’s visible surprise, Matos’ expression grew grim. “Not all the ship’s systems can be locked at that kind of high level. With the translation matrix down, it’s a matter of minutes now until they resort to conscripting a translator. And I suspect the exact same tactics that would force Esther to comply would work just as well on him.”

Natalia closed her eyes and nodded. Torture was unlikely to work, not quickly and frankly not on loyal crew with everything to protect. But...there was a cargo bay full of captives the Klingons clearly thought of as disposable. 

How many lives was it fair to expect either of them to sell, in exchange for operational security? How much pain could they expect their bridge crew to be complicit in? If the Klingons started torturing prisoners, a Starfleet officer would cooperate. And Natalia would defend that decision to the Admiralty until the day she died, because this was not a military vessel—and they were not Klingons, to think that mercy and compassion made them weak.

“We’ll have to hit the brig first,” Matos determined. “Give them no warning. We can’t risk them changing the guard arrangements before we get Atsa clear. And the others, of course, as many as we can. The armory can come afterward. Let’s move.”

Natalia tried not to cringe as Sar and Larold were waved down a tunnel in front of them. She trusted her captain’s judgement, and didn’t want to question her in front of junior officers besides; but this was her duty. “Captain,” she said, catching her lightly by the elbow as they were briefly left alone. “This is a mistake.”

She understood the urge; and there was a firm look in Matos’ eyes that said she respected Natalia’s analysis but would not be risking the lives of her crewmen. Natalia held her hands up.

“Yes,” she agreed. “We cannot afford to waste time in freeing Ensign Sandoval. But time is running out for any kind of operations. A simultaneous strike is what I would recommend. If the Klingons realize there is an active resistance, they  _ will _ reinforce obvious targets. One group should go to the brig, and the other hit the armory  _ now, _ before changes can be made.” She hesitated, then sighed. “And it allows for redundancy. If one mission fails, the second group still has a chance to regroup and free the ship. I would recommend you take the safer.”

The stubborn expression faded as Natalia made her explanation, but her captain was clearly not convinced. “I don’t like the idea of splitting up, Commander,” she said after a moment. “And you’re not risking yourself to protect me. I hear you, but we  _ have _ to be stronger together.”

Natalia had no explanation. She didn’t understand the impulse herself, the way she reached out in a rush to grip the back of her captain’s head.

Her tongue felt heavy and thick as Natalia struggled, frozen, to make her  _ understand.  _ That it did not  _ matter _ if Natalia was killed in action today, not really; she had complete faith in her captain’s ability to rally from that loss, to turn the situation to her advantage, to save the lives of her crew. But more than that—that if their captain was killed here,  _ Challenger _ was dead. Even if they managed to fight off the boarders with no life lost but hers, there would be no recovering. That Sofia Matos was the beating heart of this vessel, the single unifying point, their hopes and dreams embodied, the burning soul that held it together; that it could survive any loss but hers.

She took a deep breath.

“If both of us are killed,” she said, “Esther Hasdai inherits command of this ship.”

Matos’ deep brown eyes narrowed, just slightly.

“You take the brig,” she ordered. “I’ll take the armory.”

* * *

Atsa Sandoval was taking deep breaths.

He was the translator. If the Klingons couldn’t unlock the helm, and they couldn’t break Esther’s encryption and activate the universal translation matrix, he was the logical next target. He had to decide for himself, now, before it happened, what he intended to do when they came for him.

“They’ll hurt you,” he murmured, the first he’d spoken in at least twenty minutes. “They’ll hurt you first. They think we’re more—I don’t want to say more  _ serious  _ than we are, but—”

“I know what you mean,” Aleksi said quietly. “It’s okay.”

“I’ll have to let them,” he said. He’d known that, they both had, but...saying it out loud made it real. “I can’t…”

Aleksi shivered, but squeezed his hand. “Of course not.”

“I’m sorry.”

After a short pause, Aleksi breathed, “Atsa.”

“No,” Atsa told him, careful to keep his voice down. “Let me say this. I need to, okay? I’m sorry that I can’t protect you. I know you understand, and I know I’d want you to do the same thing if our positions were reversed, but—”

_ “Atsa,” _ Aleksi interrupted again, voice nearly inaudible. “Stop talking.”

Atsa cut himself off. Aleksi, breathing shallow, stared back at him and pointedly flicked his gaze to the side and up. After repeating this a few times, Atsa finally got the message and followed his line of sight. There was nothing there; a file cabinet, a cluster of bare insulated tubing near the ceiling. He turned to give Aleksi a quizzical look before the one thing out of place belatedly registered and he turned back in shock. Several seconds passed before a door opened and the guard patrol entered the brig, and Atsa got himself under control and tore his eyes away.

He sat with his back to the energy field, hoping against hope that they would wait to grab him until the next patrol. While the guards made their rounds and hassled various prisoners, he glanced to the side to meet Aleksi’s wide blue eyes.

_ Is that…? _ He mouthed.

Aleksi nodded, the movement almost invisible but frantic.  _ Moomin. _

It certainly had been; a marbled grey face with a single eye, peering out of an open air vent.

The guards approached their cell...and passed on.

_ Atsa, _ Aleksi mouthed, glancing at his own waist. Carefully, on the side of his body that the Klingons couldn’t see, he palmed a slim silver tube.

Atsa looked carefully away from it. Trusting in the ambient hum of the ship to cover the words, he whispered, “Why do you have a laser pointer in your boxers?”

“I got bored after you fell asleep,” was the barely audible response. “Atsa, she’s  _ right above…” _

“I saw.”

The door to the brig slid shut. Glancing over his shoulder, Aleksi held the laser pointer close to his body and wiggled it at the wall. Moomin’s good ear perked, and she dropped silently from the vent to the top of the file cabinet.

“A lot of things just started making sense,” breathed Atsa as Aleksi slowly, carefully started luring his cat to the edge of the cabinet. “Random inputs on a portable computer. Falling objects.”

The laser pointer accidentally passed over an empty Klingon wineskin that one of the guards had set down hours earlier. Moomin batted it over; Aleksi stiffened in horror, but it didn’t fall. She gripped it in her mouth, rolling over and kicking it with her back paws until it fell between the cabinet and the wall. If it had been full, it would have spilled its contents over anything set up below it, like a workstation, shorting out from water damage...

“Mrow,” Moomin commented. The guards abruptly stopped talking in the next room, and the two of them froze; but after a moment, nervously, the distant conversation began again.

“...Ghostly wails in the walls of the ship.”

Aleksi, nearly vibrating with tension as he twitched the laser pointer to the side, offered, “I guess their commander really is sick…?”

“I guess.” Atsa was trying very hard not to stare in case it ruined their plan. “But why would his cold vanish when he left the ship if…”

They realized at the same moment.

“Oh my god.” Aleksi’s face was transported.

Atsa, in tones of equal awe, breathed, “He’s  _ allergic to cats.” _

Finally, Aleksi’s patience paid off. Enticed beyond all reason by the taunting dance of her ancient nemesis, Moomin flung herself off the filing cabinet in the wake of one last flick of the pointer. Her weight landed solidly against one side of a large red switch on the control board.

With no alarms raised, not even a courtesy buzzer, the switchboard—which had no reason to believe anything untoward had occurred—flicked green, and every energy shield in the brig deactivated as one.


	4. Chapter 4

This mission had taken an interesting turn. Sofia Matos was not at all certain she liked it.

The raid on the armory had gone off without a hitch—so long as the senseless loss of sapient life didn’t count as a “hitch,” but she was nowhere near cruel or hypocritical enough to voice that thought anywhere near Lieutenant Sar. They owed the successful completion of their mission entirely to her marksmanship, for which Sofia had every intention of insisting on a commendation. 

There would be a lot of those, if they survived this.

They’d disintegrated the bodies in the hope of obfuscating the existence of their tiny band as long as possible. All the bodies but one—left dead with Keyahi’s knife in his throat, Sofia’s attempt at possibly stirring distrust and fighting in the ranks.

It had worked...a little too well. 

Even with Ensign Larold’s assistance they’d _barely_ managed to haul the entire contents of the armory into the ventilation shafts and maintenance tunnels in the twenty minutes before the guard changed, which meant they’d been just on the other side of the bulkhead to hear the reactions of the relief guard when it arrived. Sofia had expected shock, anger, suspicion, even fear; what she had not been prepared for was dead silence and frantic whispering. She had anticipated close examination of the remaining body, not—as she’d found when, spurred by insatiable curiosity, she climbed painstakingly to a vantage point to see what was going on—a full band of Klingon warriors standing at least five feet back and conferring amongst themselves.

Perhaps it was something cultural about the d’k tahg. She’d intended to ask Atsa about it when they reunited.

As such, her stomach dropped when Yurovsky returned—much sooner than anticipated—trailing the entire population of the brig. The entire population except, confirmed when a pale Aleksi Lehtonen sealed the hatch behind him, Ensign Atsa Sandoval.

“No,” she breathed.

“No, no,” Aleksi assured her, shellshocked but recovering. “He’s fine, sir! He’s okay. I think.”

“They broke out on their own,” Yurovsky explained, calm but suitably impressed. “We ran into them in the tunnels.”

Sofia shook herself. “That,” she informed the gathered crewmen with a warm smile, reaching out to clasp Nurse Srisati’s hand in her own, “is nothing short of _astonishing,_ all of you. And I see our senior helmswoman has returned to her post, as well.”

“Mrow,” Moomin agreed, settling firmly into Aleksi’s lap.

“Sir,” her master said nervously. “Atsa isn’t coming, he—when we were leaving…” Aleksi’s fingers lifted to brush his lips. When Sofia quirked an eyebrow, he flushed red and hastened to finish the thought. “He said to tell you—if this works, they’ll scuttle the ship. Don’t let them.”

“Is that all?” Sofia asked absently, exchanging a nervous look with her first officer. Yurovsky controlled her expression a little too well, in front of junior crew members.

Against all odds, it was Ensign Larold who hesitantly raised his hand.

“Um,” he said. “About that.”

* * *

 _“I’m sorry, sir,”_ Atsa said in bland, perfect Klingon for the twentieth time. _“I don’t mean to defy you, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve been alone in the brig for almost two days. I thought that was on your orders.”_

It was far too ludicrous a bluff to work, which was what he was counting on.

The captain hit him over the head again; all right, he was more than worked up enough, any further would court real disaster even more than Atsa had already decided to risk. And his head really hurt this time.

 _“Mercy, Captain,”_ he called over a snarl of _weakling coward._ _“You wanted me to translate crew records, wasn’t that right? I don’t understand what you’re saying about other prisoners or something—”_ He cut himself off to feign a convulsive sneeze. _“But let me at least be of service to you.”_

 _“You lie,”_ the captain growled. He sniffled badly, which only seemed to make him angrier. _“I would train your tongue to speak the truth before I set it to work.”_

Atsa tried to hide his fear at that; dimly he was aware that torturing him would at least burn precious time, but that didn’t mean his stomach didn’t shrivel up and scream at the thought.

 _“I can’t stop you,”_ he said. It took everything in him to keep his shoulders loose and his eyes wide and guileless; everything depended on them thinking he was stupid at best. _“You’re stronger than me. But...if I’m willing to help you in order to make pain stop, can’t you believe I’m willing to help you in order to avoid pain?”_

The captain had a lot to say about Atsa’s cowardice and lack of loyalty—but he said it while finally shoving him through the door to Sickbay. That made sense. Sickbay had the strongest encryption on its data—medical confidentiality was taken very seriously in Starfleet. But the computer banks themselves would not lock, and that gave the Klingons access to a certain level of non-privileged information 

Atsa tried, very hard, to swallow the icewater in his stomach.

“Atsa.” Dr. Atakan closed her eyes with relief. “Thank God. Are you all right? Have you seen Niwat or—”

 _“Be silent,”_ snapped the Klingon captain. To Atsa, he said, _“You will use these computers. Identify your codebreakers, your navigators, and your electricians. Identify their friends or families. Waste time or tell falsehoods, and I will cause them great pain, one by one, before they die.”_

 _“Yes, sir.”_ Atsa smiled and dropped into the seat.

Dr. Atakan looked between them. “Atsa, whatever it is he’s asking for, you can’t possibly…”

The Klingon captain levelled a disruptor at her head. Atsa typed randomly into the databank to hide his instinctive twitch.

“Doctor,” he called lightly. “Could you log me in? _I need a medical officer to access the detailed records. The session timed out when she allowed your codebreakers in earlier,”_ he explained to the captain. To Dr. Atakan, he added, “Please trust me.”

She looked at him, tense and drawn, for long enough that he expected her to tell him in no uncertain terms where to shove his collaboration; but finally, with no change in expression, she leaned around and logged him into the system. Only the system, not the medical database; but the Klingons clearly didn’t know that.

 _“You know, my people have a saying about times like this,”_ he said, sounding calm to the point of madness while trying to control his shaking hands. He enunciated clearly, in Standard this time, “Your female parent reproduces with draft beasts.”

 _“I do not care about human sayings!”_ was the only response. Good. Good. Very good.

“Hmm,” said Dr. Atakan.

The captain wasn’t done. “Your kind bring only weakness and unnatural behavior! Ghosts and plague and foolishness. Wailing and omens. Klingon warriors who vanish with no trace of disruptor fire! I will have explanations.” 

That last one was news to him, actually. He was profoundly grateful that most Klingons—let alone reactionary, bloodthirsty types with so little honor that they would take entire ships prisoner, the kind likely to be banished to asteroid-scanning details—would not have ever encountered the particular energy signature of a phase rifle on full power. 

_“I’m going to ask her about how the database is organized,”_ announced Atsa. “Act confused, then annoyed?” He smiled at the good doctor, hoping it wasn’t too manic. “Then very concerned. You don’t know any of these people. I’ll sell it.”

Dr. Atakan—actually, right now, he could probably call her Vena without being rude—kept her expression still; if she hadn’t been so exhausted, she might not have been able to, but he’d been counting on that. She took the time to shoot an absolutely _venomous_ look at their captor, but crossed to Atsa’s side to point at random bits of the screen. 

“I hope…” She moved her finger to another text entry. “You know….what you’re doing.”

“Me too,” said Atsa, and opened the first crew dossier.

Vena squinted, then shook her head brusquely. “This is as good as I can manage,” she said, waving vaguely at his hand as if telling him to open a different screen. “When do I start to look worried?”

“Perfect, and when I do,” Atsa assured her, then turned to the captain innocently. _“She says this is the wrong set of records, and asked me if I think she wouldn’t recognize every crewman on this ship after having to patch them up. These must be from some other…”_ He frowned, leaned forward, and widened his eyes slightly. _“No. You’re right, sir. This man’s records say...but then why don’t I remember…”_

Slowly, luxuriously, he feigned a massive sneeze.

* * *

“What the _hell,”_ Yurovsky whispered, “Did you say to them?”

It was a very, very good question.

Things had begun moving very quickly in the past hour. There had been a very ugly few minutes in which it looked as if the Klingons might massacre their prisoners before abandoning the ship; they’d only managed to drop a handful of phase rifles into the cargo hold without being picked up by cameras. Ultimately, however, the officers had for some reason refused to unseal the doors.

Atsa looked embarrassed as the group, huddled on the bridge while Esther feverishly worked to get all of their computers online and reprogram the entire Astrometrics department, watched the last of the boarding shuttles return home.

“I’m a _really_ good DM, sir,” he managed. “Um.”

Vena Atakan gave a wry smile. “We’re going to have to rewrite his campaign endgame.”

“If I’d _told_ him the ship had been taken over by a nebulous entity that spread via a cold-like plague, caused its victims to vanish without a trace, and erased the survivors’ memories of them, he’d have seen right through me.” He flushed. “I just had to lay the foundations and let his paranoia do the rest. He needed to think he was intelligent and on top of things for figuring it out. I figured, he hasn’t slept in two days trying to get helm control, and he’s sick as a dog on top of it from allergies, he’s probably not thinking straight.”

“You risked a lot on speculation,” Sofia observed, keeping her voice as neutral as possible.

He still flinched. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

She didn’t smile; it _had_ been reckless, a unilateral Hail Mary play. She didn’t want to encourage that too much, not in such a young officer. But she couldn’t pretend it was foolish, either. He’d risked no more than she had, with her plan to break out by force.

“I never said you were wrong to do it,” she said softly. “But be careful. It was a dice roll.”

He relaxed slightly. “Yes, captain.”

Apparently unable to stand it anymore, Aleksi crossed from his station to fling his arms around their comm officer.

“I was so worried,” he whispered. “Next time warn me before you do something like that.”

Atsa leaned into him. “I’ll try,” he promised.

 _“Next time?”_ said Dr. Atakan. At the very least, it made Aleksi nearly laugh.

Sofia tapped the comm button on her chair. “Lieutenant, how are things out there?”

Sar Jae’s response was slightly fuzzy; the microphones in Starfleet exosuits weren’t of—ahem—stellar quality. But for all the tension in her voice, for all that they were all bone-tired, she sounded in decent spirits.

 _“We have to be careful at this range, captain,”_ she reported. _“Visual contact from the Klingons isn’t impossible. But no alarms yet. And you’d know if we’d triggered a scuttling charge, sir, believe me.”_

Esther’s voice broke in on the comm channel. _“Don’t blow yourself up, minions. I still need to strangle you both for pulling this off without inviting me.”_

“Less of the comm chatter, LC.” Sofia couldn’t help but smile slightly, for all that they weren’t out of the woods yet. “Ensign?”

Somewhere along the inside of the extreme bulkhead, Ensign Larold had to be sweating. He was, in Lieutenant Sar’s words, the one with the magic fingers. Esther was their tech wizard and no mistake; but Laurence Larold had earned his spot in Sensor Control. He had a patient, delicate touch, which was exactly the kind of thing you wanted when you were crawling along the inside of your starship’s skin, deactivating by hand the hull proximity sensors that typical scuttling charges would tap into rather than run their own, in order to save on construction costs.

Lieutenant Sar was roughly twenty feet behind him and two hundred feet behind the Klingon crew; or had been, until they completed their work a few minutes ago. 

Wearing one of their limited exosuits, she was pulling herself along the side of the ship, calmly disengaging the hull panels to which the charges were attached and throwing them away from the ship like frisbees. In the blackness of space and without telltale chemical plumes that would come of anything but manually detaching the panels, there would be no indication that anything was wrong.

_“That was the last of them, captain.”_

Tired applause broke out over the shipwide broadcast of this operation. “Well _done.”_ Sofia rubbed her face. “Spacewalk team, come home. Engineering, will we be able to jump to warp once they’re inside?”

Tisarr, who had been cleared by Dr. Atakan personally before their Chief Medical Officer was forcibly driven out of Sickbay by the underlings who knew perfectly well how long it had been since she slept, yowled an affirmative. “ _On_ _your_ _signal_.”

“Wait.”

Atsa had set this up so well, after all. It was only fair to do the thing properly. And it might ensure they weren’t followed again.

A few short commands were enough to bring the hull proximity sensors back online. Admittedly, the panels they were concerned with were no longer anything resembling a proximity to the hull, but the simple sensors didn’t know that. And so, several minutes later when the detonators flicked green, _Challenger_ knew about it almost before the scuttling charges did.

Aleksi didn’t need a command. The charges ignited, flashing white in the endless black, too close to the Klingon ship for comfort but not enough to do serious damage, unfortunately—

Not unfortunately. Whatever the man’s motivations, he had spared the lives of her crew. There was little enough vengeance to be taken in killing his. Frankly, Sofia had seen enough recently of death and of causing it. 

When the flashes cleared, the Klingons would be left with empty space; _Challenger_ had jumped into the void the moment the detonation began. But they would find no wreckage, no hint of any destruction. No certainty, in fact, that there had ever been a ship at all. It was possible—probable, really—that they would be able to dig out the warp signature under the distortion of the deep-space explosives. But if they were superstitious enough, frightened enough…

It really had been a masterstroke.

Sofia sat back in her chair, and smiled.

“Mrow,” said Moomin, and Aleksi gasped.

“Oh, no,” he said. “Poor baby. You haven’t been fed in _hours.”_

* * *

The door to the situation room buzzed.

Matos, who had been distracted scratching Lehtonen’s cat behind the ears, sighed and looked up.

“Enter,” she called.

Natalia tried not to look too intimidating. She had been informed by her captain in no uncertain terms that if she gave their helmsman a nervous breakdown with her eyes alone, there would be stern words between them.

Natalia had informed _her_ in no uncertain terms that if she wanted her threats taken seriously, sir, they should be made with less laughter.

Regardless, there was probably very little she could have done to put Aleksi Lehtonen at ease right now. She stood at parade rest at her captain’s shoulder, and tried not to project whatever her ‘aura of impending doom’ might be.

Captain Matos had been in a _very_ good mood after the eighteen hours of sleep Dr. Atakan had insisted she get. Natalia wasn’t certain how to handle that.

Lehtonen and Sandoval entered the situation room together, nervous but not afraid. Good; that was as it should be, Natalia thought, relaxing slightly. Nerves were inevitable; but _fear_ was not something they should feel toward their commanding officer.

As if it was possible for an honest person to be afraid of Sofia Matos, anyway.

“Sit down,” Matos told them both, smiling warmly. “You’re not in trouble. This is just a conversation we need to have.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Aleksi Lehtonen twisted his hands in front of him. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I know I should have said something a while ago, it’s just—it’s kind of awkward, and we didn’t know for certain whether it would even…we wanted to wait and see if there was even anything…and then we’ve been so busy, but it was my job to—”

“Breathe,” Sandoval suggested. Then, respectfully but not hesitating, “I know he outranks me, captain, but I’m not in his chain of command. I actually only take orders from you, sir. Or Commander Yurovsky, obviously,” he added, as if worried he’d given offense.

Natalia inclined her head slightly in acknowledgement.

“You’re both entirely correct.” Matos handed them the padd that had been sitting in front of her. “This is the note I intend to enter into the ship’s records; please look it over and ensure the information is accurate.”

“Mrow.” Senior Helmswoman Moominkissa Lehtonen fixed them both with a stern look.

The papers had been drawn up by the time _Challenger_ had returned to friendly space; the rank insignia flashed in cheerful silver along her new gold collar band. There had been a fierce interdepartmental war over her affiliation, which Engineering had won by a narrow margin on the grounds of her demonstrated mastery of the Jeffries tubes and also the fact that Lehtonen said the gold looked nicer against her fur.

“Be patient with them,” Matos told her conspiratorially. “They’re young.”

Moomin rubbed agreeably against her hand.

Matos smiled and turned back to the young men. “This is just to ensure you’re never placed in a position where one of you _would_ be under the other’s command, or where your judgement in the field is likely to be impaired. As for the timing—yes, it would have been best practice to bring this to my attention earlier. But you’ve broken no regulations, as neither of you are in a position of authority over the other. On a personal note, I’m happy for you both.”

Lehtonen blushed. “Thank you, ma’am. This is right.”

“We actually were _sleeping_ when the Klingons boarded the ship,” Sandoval emphasized.

Matos smiled. “I’ll be certain to emphasize that. But I do have to correct you on one point, Lieutenant.”

Lehtonen tilted his head. “Sir?”

Matos glanced up at Natalia, dark eyes twinkling. Unable to resist smiling herself—Matos’ smiles were infectious—Natalia produced a dark box from her pocket and handed it over.

“With respect,” she told Lehtonen, “I wasn’t speaking to you. He's a fine helmsman; but he doesn't outrank you, Lieutenant. Congratulations, and our sincere thanks."

Sandoval looked dumbstruck as he lifted the lieutenant’s pips out of the box. Lehtonen, grinning from ear to ear, nudged him.

“You shouldn’t be surprised,” he said. “You deserve it.”

Moomin purred.


End file.
